A culinary controversy was reheated Wednesday when a federal judge in Los Angeles lifted California’s ban on the sale of foie gras, the fattened duck and goose liver beloved by gourmands and decried by animal rights activists.
U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson blocked the state attorney general from enforcing the law that took effect two years ago, finding that the federal government’s authority to regulate foie gras and other poultry products supersedes the state’s.
California barred farmers from force-feeding birds with a tube, which is how foie gras is produced. The state also banned sales of the polarizing delicacy. The prohibition on the production of foie gras remains in effect.
Within minutes of the sales ban being lifted, chef Chad White, owner of Común Kitchen & Tavern in San Diego’s East Village, notified customers on social media that he had foie gras — a Christmas gift from Carnitas’ Snack Shack owner Hanis Cavin.
“Had 4 orders sold out in 6mins via FB (Facebook) messages,” White tweeted.
By early evening, Brian Malarkey’s Searsucker Del Mar posted a photo on Twitter of a seared slice of foie gras on toast that was already on the menu.
Around the county, from downtown San Diego’s U.S. Grant Hotel to Mille Fleurs in Rancho Santa Fe, restaurants were scrambling to procure foie gras so they could start serving it.
“This weekend! Absolutely. Hello?” said Bertrand Hug, the owner of Mille Fleurs and Bertrand at Mister A’s and whose family farm in Southwest France produced foie gras.
The ban, which took effect in 2012, was the first by a state to make it illegal to sell foie gras.
Animal-rights advocates supported the ban, arguing that force-feeding ducks and geese with a tube inserted in the esophagus to fatten their livers was cruel. But chefs from San Francisco to San Diego denounced the ban as a curb on freedom of choice and was really a ploy by activists to go after meat-eating in general.
With the state ban blocked, both sides promptly pulled their knives back out.
“It wasn’t a truthful campaign,” said chef Matt Gordon, owner of Urban Solace in North Park, Sea & Smoke in Del Mar and Solace & the Moonlight Lounge in Encinitas.
“It was people reaching for low-hanging fruit, people who don’t want you eat meat in any shape or form, and they knew they couldn’t get chicken banned, so they went after foie gras.”
San Diego attorney Bryan Pease, co-founder of the Animal Protection and Rescue League and a leading figure in getting the state ban approved, said he was disheartened by Judge Wilson’s action but wasn’t ready to declare defeat.
“I’m very hopeful that the attorney general (Kamala Harris) will decide to appeal and that the 9th Circuit Court will reverse it,” said Pease.
“I don’t think the appeals court is going to decide that bloated livers from forced-fed ducks are (what) Congress meant to protect with the Poultry Products Inspection Act.”
Statements from national animal rights groups were less circumspect.
“Foie gras is French for ‘fatty liver,’ and ‘fathead’ is the American word for the shameless chefs who actually need a law to make them stop serving the swollen, near-bursting organ of a cruelly force-fed bird, said Ingrid E. Newkirk, president of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“A line will be drawn in the sand outside any restaurant that goes back to serving this ‘torture in a tin,’ ” Newkirk’s statement said. “And whoever crosses that line identifies themselves with gluttony that cannot control itself even to the point of torturing animals.”
Hug, the restaurateur, said the animal rights groups distorted the debate.
“I’ve never seen ducks like in the pictures that PETA is brandishing around,” said Hug.
The treatment of animals in California’s food supply has been in the news of late as a new law took effect on Jan. 1 that essentially abolishes confining farm animals in cramped spaces. Voters approved the new regulations in 2008 under the Proposition 2 initiative.
Wednesday’s federal foie gras ruling came in a lawsuit brought by foie gras farmers in Canada and New York and by the Hermosa Beach restaurant Hot’s Kitchen.
Their attorney, Michael Tenenbaum, called the ruling a victory “not just for foie gras but for freedom.” His statement said Hot’s Kitchen chef Sean Chaney is shouting from the rooftop, “Let the foie start flowing again!”
In his ruling, Wilson also denied a request by Attorney General Harris, the named defendant in the case, to dismiss the lawsuit. Harris argued the plaintiffs couldn’t sue her office because she hadn’t threatened to prosecute them. The attorney general was seeking “to have her pâté and eat it, too,” the judge said.
The ban on foie gras was signed into law in 2004 by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. Enforcement was postponed for almost eight years to allow producers to find an alternative to force-feeding. No substitute method surfaced.
But California restaurants haven’t been foie free since 2012, with many of them quietly serving the liver “under the table” and not charging for it.
“We cheated like everybody else,” said the French-born Hug. “We served brioche with fig compote and quince paste and charged $30 and the foie gras was complimentary. But it wasn’t good, it was cheating.”
michele.parente@utsandiego.com • (619) 293-1868 • Twitter: @sdeditgirl
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